5 ms·

Several of the Nordic/Baltic countries are like that. Why does Russia not follow that pattern? What's different about it culturally?

elefanten 9y ago
There's probably something to being a lot bigger and having more diverse population density. But ultimately the biggest culprit is probably the major political, economic and cultural hangovers from over a century of political instability.
aquadrop 9y ago
Russia is kinda actually like that. Tech usage is relatively good in Russia. Internet is cheap and fast, mobile coverage is good and mobile internet is relatively cheap, internet banking & mobile banking is better than most of Europe and USA. There's also such thing as "Gosuslugi" which is country-wide services internet portal and is actually pretty convenient innovation.
- baybal2 9y ago
  >Russia is kinda actually like that. Tech usage is relatively good in Russia. Internet is cheap and fast, mobile coverage is good and mobile internet is relatively cheap, internet banking & mobile banking is better than most of Europe and USA. There's also such thing as "Gosuslugi" which is country-wide services internet portal and is actually pretty convenient innovation. Yet, but the prime majority of all that wonderful digital cornucopia is being developed by underfed and underpaid devs with level of technical comprehension comparable to people called "jquery monkeys" in the West. By the time most of them reach late twenties, more experienced ones will move on to become professional devs abroad, another will, sadly, join the socioeconomic construct/caste of "going to nowhere 30 somethings." You guys in the West complain about age discrimination and skill obsolescence only by the time you hit forties, fifties, if not sixties, but here people hit the same stage much earlier. Companies do not pay for skill even 1/10th of what an American Dotcom would. What makes a seeming difference in the level of quality is that experienced tech people are found more evenly distributed than in US where Dotcoms and well funded companies vacuum significant portion of any much senior developers on the job market, or in China where Alibaba and Tencent literally employ double digit of all tech workforce and almost all real talent. Here, the fact that a software developer is just yet another "nothing special" white collar occupation somehow, counterintuitively brings some benefit.
  - thriftwy 9y ago
    If you tried to make a point you kind of failed. I make $40k after tax, in Russia, employed locally, and while that doesn't sound like much to an American ear, I've bought my apartment for $90k a year before. I seriously doubt anyone is going to pay me $400k before tax in the US as you suggested. I'm 32 by the way. And I never work more than 40 hr/week. I don't see how you can underpay a dev in Russia. Maybe you can by hiring in really small and depressive towns? Or promising rocket science job?
    - baybal2 9y ago
      >I make $40k after tax, in Russia That makes you a rather expensive employee if the company hiring you actually pays your pension contributions, EI, medical bills, and other quasi-tax charges (which are much higher than in the West.) 24k a year is what a good grad can expect in a company that pays taxes in full. The full cost of employing such a guy will be right about $40k
      - thriftwy 9y ago
        Not sure it's much higher, I'd say roughly the same when you consider tax bracket and things like 401k. But sure, it's not cheap.
      - nofilter 9y ago
        In Estonia the employee doesn't have to pay any taxes what-so-ever. The employer is the one that pays taxes from your bruto salary, which is required by the law (health insurance, pension, etc). In fact most people, when negotiating salaries, simply ask for how much they want in NET, because nobody besides the company cares about bruto.
        thriftwy 9y ago
        In Russia, you pay 13% in direct tax (deduced automatically) and also your employer pays an additional ~30% to health insurance, pension, etc. It's frequent nowdays to be cited your salary before 13% tax.
aj-4 9y ago
Estonia and its people are culturally the most similar to Finland - in fact none of the baltic countries are slavic - and all speak exceptional English (better than Western Europe). They are very pro-EU countries whom have benefitted greatly economically and 'defensively' (vs Russia, at least in terms of peace of mind). What will continue to limit Russia are its authoritarian attitudes towards information and trade.
- xxs 9y ago
  The part about English spoken in the Baltic is vastly untrue -- outside (center of) Tartu and Tallinn [the 2 biggest cities] English is not that well spoken when it comes to Estonia. Latvia is similar - mostly Riga (even though Russian is more profoundly spoken). Most of the younger generation could have an ok English but nothing remarkable, even doctors may not have good English. I don't have good enough impressions of Lithuania, although it's not uncommon to fall back to Russian in restaurants. Compared to Denmark or Norway where virtually everyone (from kids to elderly people) actually speak decent English, none of the Baltic countries have 'exceptional English'.
  - rhblake 9y ago
    Compared to the Nordic countries or Netherlands, 'exceptional' might be the wrong word. But certainly compared to, say, Germany or France, the level of English is in my experience considerably higher in the Baltics (and in Poland too). I say this having lived in both Germany and France and visited all the Baltic countries. "Even doctors may not have good English" -- in Paris I'm happy to find one that will speak English at all. Do not underestimate how unwilling or afraid to speak English a lot of people are even in places like Paris and Berlin.
    - xxs 9y ago
      I agree about Germany (depends a lot on the city, though) or esp. France. Latvian, Lithuanian and Estonian (which is non indo european language) have virtually no non-native speakers and large amounts of the Russian born citizens (and aliens) may not speak the language, rendering English a good choice to obtain information. Having tiny user base forces the case compared to France, Germany or Italy (imo worse than both France/Germany). For instance movies at the theater (and largely on the TV) have no dubbing unless they are targeted to kids who are unable to read.
fsloth 9y ago
Culturally? Finland, Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia are culturally distinct from Russia, i.e. non-slavic. E.g. they all have their own archaic languages and so on. One can look at the populations in circa 1300 and extrapolate from that. Without going into details - the baltic coast had it's own catholic/pagan populations with trade ties to hanseatic cities, and those populations are the basis for current nation states. Russia, with it's slavic culture strongly tied to the greek orthodox church was a bit further to east. See for example https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territorial_changes_of_Russia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territorial_changes_of_Russi... and other wikipedia pages on the baltic states. None of this have much to do with the current tech scene, though :)
- aj-4 9y ago
  So interesting how the diaspora happened. Especially with the slavic Czech Republic and Croatia all the way west.
Spooky23 9y ago
Russia has been through the wringer. They had an insane monarchy that delayed industrialization, missed out on the middle class development and went through a scorched earth total war and communist regime. It’s a nation of contrast and paradox. Russia is a lot like the US in many ways.
- thriftwy 9y ago
  > insane monarchy that delayed industrialization That actually isn't true. Russian monarchy wasn't late to industrialize, and around half of industrial success claimed by USSR is rooted before 1917. For example, Donbass was already a thing back then. The other half was built by the USA.
  - Spooky23 9y ago
    Most sources talk about the industrial revolution hitting Russia in the 1890s — it was an agrarian society with feudal governance. It was decades behind the UK and others. That’s not to say there was no industry, but over half of output was peasant agriculture circa 1900, and the old methods were unable to adequately feed the nation.
    - thriftwy 9y ago
      Of course it was behind UK. Everybody was behind UK at the time. It's like comparing with South Korea today. Soviet period is when mass starvations happened. And not only during wars.

elefanten 9y ago

There's probably something to being a lot bigger and having more diverse population density. But ultimately the biggest culprit is probably the major political, economic and cultural hangovers from over a century of political instability.

aquadrop 9y ago

Russia is kinda actually like that. Tech usage is relatively good in Russia. Internet is cheap and fast, mobile coverage is good and mobile internet is relatively cheap, internet banking & mobile banking is better than most of Europe and USA. There's also such thing as "Gosuslugi" which is country-wide services internet portal and is actually pretty convenient innovation.

baybal2 9y ago
>Russia is kinda actually like that. Tech usage is relatively good in Russia. Internet is cheap and fast, mobile coverage is good and mobile internet is relatively cheap, internet banking & mobile banking is better than most of Europe and USA. There's also such thing as "Gosuslugi" which is country-wide services internet portal and is actually pretty convenient innovation. Yet, but the prime majority of all that wonderful digital cornucopia is being developed by underfed and underpaid devs with level of technical comprehension comparable to people called "jquery monkeys" in the West. By the time most of them reach late twenties, more experienced ones will move on to become professional devs abroad, another will, sadly, join the socioeconomic construct/caste of "going to nowhere 30 somethings." You guys in the West complain about age discrimination and skill obsolescence only by the time you hit forties, fifties, if not sixties, but here people hit the same stage much earlier. Companies do not pay for skill even 1/10th of what an American Dotcom would. What makes a seeming difference in the level of quality is that experienced tech people are found more evenly distributed than in US where Dotcoms and well funded companies vacuum significant portion of any much senior developers on the job market, or in China where Alibaba and Tencent literally employ double digit of all tech workforce and almost all real talent. Here, the fact that a software developer is just yet another "nothing special" white collar occupation somehow, counterintuitively brings some benefit.
- thriftwy 9y ago
  If you tried to make a point you kind of failed. I make $40k after tax, in Russia, employed locally, and while that doesn't sound like much to an American ear, I've bought my apartment for $90k a year before. I seriously doubt anyone is going to pay me $400k before tax in the US as you suggested. I'm 32 by the way. And I never work more than 40 hr/week. I don't see how you can underpay a dev in Russia. Maybe you can by hiring in really small and depressive towns? Or promising rocket science job?
  - baybal2 9y ago
    >I make $40k after tax, in Russia That makes you a rather expensive employee if the company hiring you actually pays your pension contributions, EI, medical bills, and other quasi-tax charges (which are much higher than in the West.) 24k a year is what a good grad can expect in a company that pays taxes in full. The full cost of employing such a guy will be right about $40k
    - thriftwy 9y ago
      Not sure it's much higher, I'd say roughly the same when you consider tax bracket and things like 401k. But sure, it's not cheap.
    - nofilter 9y ago
      In Estonia the employee doesn't have to pay any taxes what-so-ever. The employer is the one that pays taxes from your bruto salary, which is required by the law (health insurance, pension, etc). In fact most people, when negotiating salaries, simply ask for how much they want in NET, because nobody besides the company cares about bruto.
      - thriftwy 9y ago
        In Russia, you pay 13% in direct tax (deduced automatically) and also your employer pays an additional ~30% to health insurance, pension, etc. It's frequent nowdays to be cited your salary before 13% tax.

aj-4 9y ago

Estonia and its people are culturally the most similar to Finland - in fact none of the baltic countries are slavic - and all speak exceptional English (better than Western Europe). They are very pro-EU countries whom have benefitted greatly economically and 'defensively' (vs Russia, at least in terms of peace of mind). What will continue to limit Russia are its authoritarian attitudes towards information and trade.

xxs 9y ago
The part about English spoken in the Baltic is vastly untrue -- outside (center of) Tartu and Tallinn [the 2 biggest cities] English is not that well spoken when it comes to Estonia. Latvia is similar - mostly Riga (even though Russian is more profoundly spoken). Most of the younger generation could have an ok English but nothing remarkable, even doctors may not have good English. I don't have good enough impressions of Lithuania, although it's not uncommon to fall back to Russian in restaurants. Compared to Denmark or Norway where virtually everyone (from kids to elderly people) actually speak decent English, none of the Baltic countries have 'exceptional English'.
- rhblake 9y ago
  Compared to the Nordic countries or Netherlands, 'exceptional' might be the wrong word. But certainly compared to, say, Germany or France, the level of English is in my experience considerably higher in the Baltics (and in Poland too). I say this having lived in both Germany and France and visited all the Baltic countries. "Even doctors may not have good English" -- in Paris I'm happy to find one that will speak English at all. Do not underestimate how unwilling or afraid to speak English a lot of people are even in places like Paris and Berlin.
  - xxs 9y ago
    I agree about Germany (depends a lot on the city, though) or esp. France. Latvian, Lithuanian and Estonian (which is non indo european language) have virtually no non-native speakers and large amounts of the Russian born citizens (and aliens) may not speak the language, rendering English a good choice to obtain information. Having tiny user base forces the case compared to France, Germany or Italy (imo worse than both France/Germany). For instance movies at the theater (and largely on the TV) have no dubbing unless they are targeted to kids who are unable to read.

fsloth 9y ago

Culturally? Finland, Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia are culturally distinct from Russia, i.e. non-slavic. E.g. they all have their own archaic languages and so on. One can look at the populations in circa 1300 and extrapolate from that. Without going into details - the baltic coast had it's own catholic/pagan populations with trade ties to hanseatic cities, and those populations are the basis for current nation states. Russia, with it's slavic culture strongly tied to the greek orthodox church was a bit further to east. See for example https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territorial_changes_of_Russia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territorial_changes_of_Russi... and other wikipedia pages on the baltic states. None of this have much to do with the current tech scene, though :)

aj-4 9y ago
So interesting how the diaspora happened. Especially with the slavic Czech Republic and Croatia all the way west.

Spooky23 9y ago

Russia has been through the wringer. They had an insane monarchy that delayed industrialization, missed out on the middle class development and went through a scorched earth total war and communist regime. It’s a nation of contrast and paradox. Russia is a lot like the US in many ways.

thriftwy 9y ago
> insane monarchy that delayed industrialization That actually isn't true. Russian monarchy wasn't late to industrialize, and around half of industrial success claimed by USSR is rooted before 1917. For example, Donbass was already a thing back then. The other half was built by the USA.
- Spooky23 9y ago
  Most sources talk about the industrial revolution hitting Russia in the 1890s — it was an agrarian society with feudal governance. It was decades behind the UK and others. That’s not to say there was no industry, but over half of output was peasant agriculture circa 1900, and the old methods were unable to adequately feed the nation.
  - thriftwy 9y ago
    Of course it was behind UK. Everybody was behind UK at the time. It's like comparing with South Korea today. Soviet period is when mass starvations happened. And not only during wars.